We have all been warned of the dangers of social media. In every conversation regarding blogging, tweeting or posting, one warning is consistently restated: once you put something on the Internet, the rest of the world is able to see it forever. In today’s world of technology, employers, potential romantic partners and even grandparents prowl social media, hoping to learn more about the lives of those they search. What you post is a crucial factor in determining how you are seen as a person.

But, we have all had our moments. We have all written a post that others were not very fond of. I admittedly have tweeted references to people that are less than flattering. Yes, you can manually delete posts, but what about the long-lost posts that people may accidently stumble upon that put you in a horrible light? Well, there’s an app for that now.

Clear is an in-the-works iOS app that flags old Twitter, Facebook and Instagram posts that could be considered offensive and will, upon request, delete them from your feed. According to Techcrunch, the app prowls your feeds not just for blatantly offensive posts containing, for example, profanities and racial slurs, but also for “warning signs like references to racial groups or sexual orientation.”The app can even analyze the general sentiment of past posts.

The creator of the app, Ethan Czahor, wanted to help others avoid the consequences of social media that he himself was unable to navigate. But how effective is the app?For one, it could be a useful device in helping social media users choose less offensive words. This could enforce better social media habits, and make people aware of what they post and its effects.Another great feature is that Clear does the work of revisiting old posts for you, which saves time if, for example, you have a job interview and want to clear your profile quickly.

The app holds people accountable for their posts by showing any faults and allowing them to decide whether or not to post, but there are some issues. For one, if someone decides to screenshot your post or photo, the app cannot erase that from the device afterwards.

Another misconception is that this new app will “clean up” social media. In theory, it could. However, those who use their social media as an outlet for airing grievances may not be willing to get the app. No one likes being told that they need to clean out their posts. People who are aware of their derogatory posts are not likely to be the ones to purchase and use this app.

While this app will help hold people accountable for what they post, it may also make it too easy for some to censor their past. We should all have to accept our faults on social media. Clear just makes it so you don’t have to pay for them later.

Margaret Shaver ’17 (shaver@stolaf.edu) is from Centennial, Colo. She majors in English and sociology/anthropology with a management concentration.

At this year’s White House Correspondents Association Dinner, after President Obama’s remarks on Hillary Clinton’s efforts to gain funds for her 2016 Presidential Race, the president’s anger translator Luther, a character originated and played by comedian Keegan-Michael Key on the sketch show “Key and Peele,” had one thing to say: “She gonna get that money, she gonna get all the money… Khaleesi is coming to Westeros!”

Luther’s words summarized the controversy that has been brewing lately surrounding the source behind Clinton’s funding for the presidential campaign.

This controversy boiled to flash point just days before the association dinner, when HarperCollins announced their plans to publish Clinton Cash, a 186-page book investigating the donations made to the Clinton Foundation by foreign entities, written by author and political correspondent Peter Schweizer. Several news agencies, such as The New York Times,The Washington Post and Fox News, were given advanced copies of the book under the agreement that they will pursue in greater detail the stories covered within the pages. Following the announcement of Clinton Cash, a huge debacle began throughout the news media centered on whether or not the book revealed a black chapter of yet another Clinton or was just a normal part of the political conduct, blown out of proportion by Schweizer.

According to The New York Times and the news agencies that received the book in advance, there are various examples of Hillary working in cahoots with different organizations in exchange for massive donations. One such example touched on a free-trade agreement in Colombia that benefited a major foundation donor’s natural resource investments in the South American nation’s development projects in the aftermath of the 2010 Haitian earthquake. The book also detailed the more than one million dollars in payments to Ms. Clinton by a Canadian bank and major shareholder in the Keystone XL oil pipeline around the time the project was being debated in the State Department.

But what does all this suggest? When we take a look across the aisle, money is still an incredibly important asset and resource for Republican campaigns. The Guardian pointed out the extensive ties Jeb Bush and the Bush family have to the energy industry, with former president George H.W. Bush having made his fortune in oil wildcatting. These same connections that funded former president George W. Bush’s personal failed energy companies now extend to Jeb Bush as well.The New York Times also reported that Ted Cruz gained the financial backing of Robert Mercer, the co-CEO of hedge fund magnate, Renaissance Technologies. According to Politico, Rand Paul has turned to the billionaire venture capitalists of Silicon Valley, such as PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and Napster’s billionaire co-founder Sean Parker, in his own attempts to garner campaign funds.

Gathering funding for a political race is not an action that is technically illegal, and has been done by politicians for years. Furthermore, as reported by Newsweek, Schweizer did not attempt to prove any laws were broken in Clinton Cash.In fact, he practically begins the book by hedging his accusations: “I realize how shocking these allegations may appear. Are these activities illegal? That’s not for me to say. I’m not a lawyer.”

Will Clinton Cash cause some degree of backlash towards Clinton and her campaign?Most likely, yes.However, although the book is aimed at just the Clinton family, the information presented sheds light on the common practice employed by politicians, regardless of party, during campaigns: giving companies and donors what they need in return for funding. Because of its discussion on this practice, Clinton Cash is poised to become a hard-hitting investigative piece on the unsavory ways politicians receive money.But as Taylor Wafforf wrote in Newsweek, “throwing up a bunch of dots and not connecting them isn’t great judgement either.”

As such, it will be up to the readers to choose whether to take the book as a surface level attack at the Clintons, or as a piece of solid investigative journalism.

Sam Pattinasarane ’18 (pattin1@stolaf.edu) is from Jakarta, Indonesia. He majors in political science and Asian studies.

The Musical Dialogues Conference, which is a collaboration between St. Olaf and Carleton colleges, aims to provide a forum for students to share original research and creative work. Multiple students from both schools presented their projects and papers regarding music and some of the deeper meanings behind music. Music faculty at the two colleges host the symposium with support from the Broadening the Bridge initiative. Broadening the Bridge launched last January as a result of collaboration between St. Olaf College President David Anderson and Carleton College President Steven Poskanzer. The initiative attempts to foster teamwork and communication between the two Northfield colleges.

University of Michigan Associate Professor of Musicology, American Culture and African American Studies Mark Clague delivered the keynote speech for the Musical Dialogues symposium on May 2 to St. Olaf and Carleton students and faculty gathered in Dittman Center.His lecture, entitled “This Is America: Jimi Hendrix’s Reimaginings of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at Woodstock and Beyond,” focused on intersections ofAmerican culture and music, specifically how music symbolizes what it means to be a citizen and a nation.

When our parents bought their first mobile phones in the early aught’s, they were used exclusively for emergencies. Now we assume that our friend is having an emergency if they don’t respond to a text within fifteen minutes.

Most of us carry computers in our pockets that are more powerful than the machinery that was used to put people on the moon. Technology is changing and we’re changing with it.

Our cellphones have become extensions of ourselves. Most college students can’t go anywhere or do anything without their mobile device.

Though they enable us to have quick, reliable communication with people outside our immediate vicinity, cell phones negatively impact how we interact with those around us. Whether we’re texting, checking our Facebook or swiping on Tinder, cellphones consume our attention, even when we are engaged in a good personal conversation. It’s distracting and frustrating for a group dynamic when one or more people are so engrossed in texting that vibrating ringtones interrupt every other word.

It seems that we use cellphones as everything except as a phone. In terms of efficiency, this doesn’t make any sense. Mobile phones were created to improve our communication, but they have regressed it instead.

When we type text messages, we have to engage much of our focus. We use our eyes to watch the screen for typos, engage our thumbs to type and put our concentration on developing a succinct message.

We’re fooling ourselves if we think that we can still be present while doing all that. When the response comes, we again revert our attention away from our surroundings back to the screen in our palm. This back and forth can go on for ages. This takes time away from quality interactions with friends and family members, not to mention paying attention in class.

Why not call? It may seem old fashioned but it’s much quicker and more personal than texting. Telephones are remarkable; we have the ability to hear the voice and expression of friends that are miles away. Quality of conversation is also higher because you are completely focused on that conversation with the person on the other end the whole time.

By calling people, we can connect at a more human level without all the hassle and misunderstanding that plagues texting. We have all had those awkward experiences of someone interpreting a text message in a way that we did not intend.

We also don’t irritate the people around us by being distracted for long periods of time, like we do when we when we are texting (have you ever worked on a group project with one of those people? It’s the worst). A one minute call accomplishes the work of ten minutes of texting.

My challenge to you this summer is be conscious of how often you text. If you’re doing it to make plans or flirt, consider dropping a line instead so that you can showcase your personality.

Rather than just typing little quips, make plans to get together. Face-to-face interaction time is seriously declining among our generation, in both amount and quality.

Spend that time being present with the people you love rather than letting your phone distract you with what’s far away or coming next.

mcmillap@stolaf.edu

Are you an expert on all things romantic? Let everyone on campus benefit from your fabulous advice! Email mess-ae@stolaf.edu for more information on becoming one of our love columnists for next year’s Manitou Messenger.

On Wednesday, April 29 the Political Awareness Committee invited former Republican senator Olympia Snowe to speak to the St. Olaf community. She served as one of Maine’s senators from 1995 to 2013. Snowe made history as the fourth woman in American politics to be elected to both houses of Congress and the first to serve in both houses of a state legislature. Snowe is known for her criticism of the extreme partisanship in Congress, as outlined in her 2013 book,Fighting for Common Ground: How We Can Fix the Stalemate in Congress. Her speech, entitled “What’s Gone Wrong in Washington and Why it Doesn’t Have to Be This Way,”addressed these problems and challenged students to rethink the paralyzing divide of modern-day Congress.

Snowe started her speech with a summary of her personal background. Both of her Greek immigrant parents died before she was nine. After this tragedy, she moved in with her aunt and uncle but continued to commute over an hour to school every day, occasionally getting stranded in Grand Central Station overnight and sleeping on benches. She has always considered herself “a minority of a minority of a minority,” as a female Greek-American from New York who moved to Maine.

On Snowe’s first day as a senator of Maine, Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole caught her looking around the chambers in awe. He said to her, “You are looking around wondering how you got here, but in six months you will be looking around wondering how everyone else got here.” She found out he was right.

“There are smart people in Congress, but there are fewer and fewer who are willing to reach across the aisle and act bipartisan,” Snowe said. She discovered that for many Congressmen, the first priority was working towards re-election instead of focusing on making productive changes during their current term. She expressed frustration that many politicians only care about the potential gain of political capital from each bill rather than the content of the bill itself and therefore sacrifice bipartisanship to please donors and constituencies.”

The 2013 and 2014 Congressional sessions were the least productive in modern history. The last time Congress was this ineffective was in 1805, when the government ran out of money after the Louisiana Purchase. This extreme gridlock is unacceptable to Snowe.

She maintained that when Congress fails to accomplish anything, the American citizens feel the lack of productivity and lose trust in the government. She cited that the recent presidential election had the lowest turnout of voters – 36 percent – since 1942 when America was at war.

“Americans feel powerless to affect the process,” Snowe said. “They don’t receive any benefit from participating in their democracy.”

In 2014, over half of the American public supported compromise across party lines. Snowe believes that now is the time to enact change.

She went on to detail many of her accomplishments during her years in Congress and how she personally tried to end partisanship and encourage compromise. Because of her work, she was named the 54th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes magazine in 2005 and one of the top 10 U.S. Senators by Time magazine in 2006.

In 2012, Snowe chose not to seek re-election to the Senate, but she has stayed committed to encouraging bipartisanship in Congress.

“I did not leave the United States Senate because I no longer believed in its potential, but precisely because I do. I wanted to give voice to the millions of Americans who believe as I do that the Congress has gone awry,” Snowe said.

“After having two hyper-polarizing political leaders from either side of the aisle, Newt Gingrich last spring, and Rev. Al Sharpton in the fall, it was great for PAC to have someone that stresses bipartisanship,” said Grace Kane ’15, a previous College Republicans representative on PAC.

Snowe urged the audience to speak up about the importance of bipartisanship, saying that “silence is not golden. We have to demand cooperation, and the voices that demand cooperation have to be louder than the voices that demand polarization.”

Associate Professor of Sociology Ibtesam Al-Atiyat is currently working on a research paper analyzing “native informant” writings. A native informant is a person of a particular race, culture, ethnicity or religion that is perceived as an expert on said group due primarily to the fact that he or she belongs to it. Planned to be published in the academic journal Critical Sociology, Al-Atiyat’s research focuses on a new genre of native informant writings about Muslim women that has emerged in Western markets. This genre is generally written by Muslim women themselves, many of whom have fled to the West from oppression in their native countries. Their stories are retold as memoirs.

Despite the claim that the purpose of these stories is to expose the lives of women oppressed by extremist Islam and Islam-related cultures, many of the memoirs are written primarily for Western audiences in Western languages. In turn, the average Western reader consumes the story without sufficient context and understands it as a true representation of the entire Muslim world. Though there are differences within the stories, they depict the same stereotypical images of secluded, veiled and oppressed Muslim women.

“[Due to these stories]women in the Muslim world can only be explained by one variable: Islam,” Al-Atiyat said. “You eventually can’t look at the historical background, or colonialism, economy and politics. The only variable needed is Islam.”

Al-Atiyat also noted that writing about Islam and Muslim women has become a huge money-making industry in the West. Many native informants taking refuge in the West, particularly in the U.S., are now seeking and receiving fame and money for their stories.

“If you want to become famous and be interviewed at CNN and be a celebrity in the West, the one thing you can do is criticize Islam and show connections between Islam and terrorism. And this is how many of those women approach the discourse,” Al-Atiyat said.

The rise in popularity of these novels has generated problems. Al-Atiyat explains that since Muslim women are portrayed in a uniform and homogenized manner throughout the literature, the diversity of stories and conditions of women in the Muslim world is lost. Furthermore, this discourse presents the lives of Muslim women in an abrasive, gloomy and hopeless manner, as if every Muslim woman is suffering from brutal oppression under the patriarchy. However, many Muslim women, including Al-Atiyat herself, serve as counterexamples to this stereotype.

“I am a Muslim woman. I do not necessarily cover my head, not that I have anything against [that choice]. I hold a Ph.D. I am an independent woman. I have a career. My religion did not really limit my life choices,” Al-Atiyat said.

She argues that native informant memoirs generalize the lives of Muslim women by offering an individual face and story as representative of an entire culture. This serves as the catalyst for Al-Atiyat’s criticism.

To prevent oneself from being convinced by this way of understanding, according to Al-Atiyat, one must have critical perspectives that can help in distinguishing good literature from bad literature, or even good scholarship from bad scholarship.

“You have to subject every form of knowledge about women in the Middle East, and about women in Islam, through a thorough critique that should inform one’s criticism of this literature or scholarship,” Al-Atiyat said. In the end, however, the ultimate purpose of this research for Al-Atiyat is “to provide the reader with the critical framework on how to approach this genre of literature, and how to reflect on it critically without losing the sympathy with the human stories.”

Regarding how St. Olaf students should approach this genre, Al-Atiyat believes that the way in which one approaches the text is important.

“It depends on how you read and the purpose of your reading. If you’re reading [these stories] for entertainment purposes, then there is something wrong with you, reading about victimized women for entertainment. If your purpose is to learn about the lives of women, then you owe it to yourself and you owe it to those women to learn about their lives in a more complex, sophisticated and critical manner. And do not take a native informant’s story at face value. You have to critically think and reflect on it. The story might be true, but its representation might be wrong. What is happening to one woman does not necessarily mean that it’s happening to every woman.”

hen I was younger, at a sleepover, my parents would come to pick me up and I would beg for another hour because I felt like it hadn’t been long enough. Now, after a four year sleepover, it’s still not enough.

My dad used to say, when I was in the process of picking a college – and, eventually, when I chose St. Olaf for real – that I “drank the Kool-Aid.”

The idea of college doesn’t become real until you have to hug your parents goodbye. Walking out of that gymnasium, trying to look brave, I found myself surrounded by teary-eyed freshmen. There was a crying girl walking next to me. Being unequipped to handle this situation I looked for anyone to help me. I made eye contact with the boy on the other side of the crying girl. That boy from Wyoming turned into one of my best friends.

I didn’t hold back the tears. Actually, as soon as I moved to the Hill, I hardly ever held back the tears. I drank the Kool-Aid and surrendered myself to the wild emotional adventure that the next four years became. St. Olaf became the best thing that ever happened to me, simply because of the hundreds of thousands of everyday moments I’ve gotten to share with friends and classmates and teachers and all the people I’ve met along the way.

She didn’t hold back the tears. The first day on a Hoyme window seat – back when Hoyme still had window seats – on the second floor we didn’t hold back the tears. Later that day, in response to one of her questions, I told her, “if this friendship continues, I’ll tell you.” Little did I know.

He told me the next day. The friendship continued. I don’t even remember what I asked anymore. Probably something personal about an old girlfriend, or something like that. We met more friends, shared cookies that somebody’s mom sent along for move-in, watched Paranormal Activity 2 in a dorm room and marched down Ole Ave with a pack of other Hoyme babies to experience our first Jesse James Days.

It’s weird to think about. If, tomorrow, I packed up my things and moved to a new “St. Olaf,” and sat on a window seat with a complete stranger, what would I say about the last four years? I’ve been to class, I’ve done hours of homework, I’ve learned a lot (I hope) but the things that stick out, the things that are window seat worthy are the almost imperceptible moments. The Jesse James Days, the Pause pizza, the poop jokes and the people you’ve shared those moments with.

Do you remember the first snow at St. Olaf? We built a fire in the Hoyme lounge (back before they remodeled the building and made it bright and updated like some sort of hotel) and baked cookies and read books and nobody could stop smiling.

That was one of those rare moments when I realized I was living through a lasting memory while it was happening. Remember the first time we went sledding? It’s funny that most of our memories involve snow. We took trays from the caf and made long sled chains, I tried snorting snow and we took too many pictures of us trying to look “cool.”

How about the time we spent a Saturday trying to film a St. Olaf themed version of The Breakfast Club? Or the night a whole bunch of us ran naked through the baseball fields when nobody else was around? We watched Lutefest die. We watched Cherry Berry open and then close. We went to probably at least 25 Pause dances – some super fun and some awful. We knew Hoyme when those window panes were red. We lived on campus before road signs and roundabouts arrived. We watched potstickers in the Caf take a leave of absence, and we happily welcomed their return. We elected civil servants, defeated some Minnesota amendments, attended demonstrations, started conversations about sexual assault and had open dialogues with one another. As Oles, we have grieved, celebrated and worshiped together.

belisle@stolaf.edu

pelegano@stolaf.edu

]]>http://manitoumessenger.com/weekly-columns/2015/05/13/st-olaf-sentiments/feed/0Is the Champions League losing its spark?http://manitoumessenger.com/sports/2015/05/13/is-the-champions-league-losing-its-spark/
http://manitoumessenger.com/sports/2015/05/13/is-the-champions-league-losing-its-spark/#commentsThu, 14 May 2015 01:50:40 +0000http://manitoumessenger.com/?p=5088

The semi­finals of the UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) Champions League are upon us once again, with Juventus, Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich proving to be the cream of the crop as the four remaining teams in the competition once again. However, many have argued that football’s greatest club competition is becoming increasingly stale and predictable, with the same rich clubs always progressing to the final rounds. Others have criticized the way in which teams have been drawn, often playing the same teams year after year in the group stages. Has the Champions League lost some of its luster, or is the it still captivating fans around the world.

There is certainly a great deal of evidence to suggest that the tournament has been dominated by a small number of teams in recent years. For example, Real Madrid has reached the semifinals in each of the last four years and Bayern Munich has missed the semifinals only once since the 2009­-2010 season. It is clear that this tournament is becoming more and more predictable as the years go by and it looks to remain that way for the future.

Additionally, the predictability of the group stage draw has not helped to heighten the excitement surrounding the tournament. Bayern Munich and Manchester City have played each other in the group stages for three of the past four seasons, as have Arsenal and Borussia Dortmund. Personally, I feel that a huge part of the excitement of the Champions League is watching teams that rarely play compete head to head. ­The repetition of certain fixtures is making the event increasingly dull.

The fact that a small selection of teams dominate the tournament each year is not surprising. It is representative of the way football is currently operating worldwide. The English Premier League is dominated by the “Big Four,” Real Madrid and Barcelona battle it out in La Liga each season and Bayern Munich runs away with the Bundesliga year after year. There are only a small number of elite sides in domestic competitions and this carries over to the Champions League. Most sides simply do not have the resources to compete for a league title around the world. A monopoly of money and talent has affected leagues in every country.

The Champions League is following the same trend. Last season, all eight group winners won their first knockout round. Many agree that this is extremely problematic to the tournament’s success because many teams find themselves unrepresented in late rounds.

“The aim for the Champions League has to be for every game to mean something but, at the moment, they do not,” former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher wrote in his D​aily Mail column two seasons ago. “Group stages have fizzled out and it has only been from the quarterfinals that the competition has come alive.”

The Champions League has a serious problem on its hands, and it needs to find a way to reinvent itself in the near future or risk becoming an obsolete tournament that will lose football fans around the globe.

It was a cold spring morning as I pulled into Selma, Ala. I had been at a conference in Tuscaloosa and had decided to pay my respects before returning to Minnesota. The early hours ensured that only a handful of pilgrims were present. We walked around, detached from each other, and silently observed the sacredness of the place. Somberness pervaded the air and hung like a well-worn tapestry over our vigil. I had wanted to visit Selma to stand in solidarity and yet being there left me bewildered.

Fifty years ago, Selma was the scene of some of the most publicized violence of the Civil Rights Movement era.As unarmed marchers walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, State Troopers and a posse of local men attacked. Amidst the haze of tear gas and screams of pain and fear, witnesses were privy policemen viciously beating marchers with billy clubs. Amelia Boynton Robinson, a local leader, was beaten unconscious. The image of her lying bloodied in the streets would shock the world and incite global outcry against Bloody Sunday.

Selma still bears witness to that bygone era. As I walked the streets, the dilapidated buildings and aging infrastructure clashed with the commemorative events that would occur throughout the weekend, celebrations honoring the triumph of the Civil Rights Movement. There was also the evidence of several anachronisms; the night before, the Ku Klux Klan had left pamphlets around town and the Edmund Pettus Bridge is still named for a Confederate general and white supremacist. The victory of Bloody Sunday seemed tarnished by these contradictions and I was left dubious of today’s social justice causes.

As I stood trying to reconcile the present with the past, I remembered that Nietzsche was incredibly concerned with the paralysis of man through history. While rarely associated with civil rights struggles, he offers a valuable lesson to those trying to understand the roots of social movements. According to Nietzsche, history should instruct us on how to live courageously in the present. Rather than being immobilized by the past, he implores us to employ the past, be it sublime or horrible, as inspiration for living our lives.

The bridge was my final view as I walked away, passing an elderly couple moving towards it hand in hand. While I was not entirely placated by the insights that Nietzsche offered, I was determined to return to campus committed to action. I began to appreciate the germ of what social justice work I had been previously involved with as tied to the events of Bloody Sunday. It was upon further reflection that I realized the significance of standing on the shoulders of those giants from 50 years ago. Their actions, and the history that they made inspire me to continue their work and to live my life in a manner befitting their legacy.

Nathan Detweiler ’16 (detweile@stolaf.edu) is from Minneapolis, Minn. He majors inFrench, philosophy and political science.

On the evening of Friday, May 1 in Tomson 280, film historian Rick Altman presented to his audience a recreation of early film exhibition through a program of short film clips, illustrated songs and interactive sing-alongs titled The Living Nickelodeon.

Not to be confused with the popular childrens’ TV channel, the “nickelodeon” of the program’s title refers to the 19th century colloquialism for the earliest form of movie theater. The nomenclature originates from the five cent admission cost and the Greek “odeion,” meaning roofed-over theater.

“[The films] help us understand the early years of cinema, when cinema wasn’t yet cinema,” Altman said. “We — looking retrospectively — we easily assume that cinema is in the center, because it is now, and anything else is embroidered around it. But in fact during this early period, cinema was not yet really its own identity. It was still thought of as an offshoot of other systems and media.”

What started as research for his book, Silent Film Sound, quickly evolved into a larger project.

“I looked into finding this cache of illustrated songs and I knew that they were important, but that there had not been enough of them available for people to see,” Altman said.

In 1998, Altman, along with two of his colleagues, put together The Living Nickelodeon as a way to show modern audiences what film attendance was like for people living in the early 1900s.

“[We wanted] to show people how the programs actually worked. They were not just film programs; that the film was pretty much secondary,” Altman said.

Altman’s message was infused throughout the hour and a half long presentation. Altman, accompanied by Kjersti Anderson ’17, began the show with a musical number, and continued with a variety of silent short films, illustrated slides with live musical accompaniment and silent films that also involved live music.

One of the first silent films featured a large man and a small man engaging in a dramatic fight. The film sported impressive effects: at one point the larger man threw the smaller man high into the air. Though the smaller man had obviously been replaced by a dummy, the cut was clean and surprisingly convincing given the fact that the clip was over 100 years old.

This style of editing did not seem to change the overall effect of the film’s slapstick style that had much of the audience in fits of laughter.

As the program progressed through the 1900s, Altman began to inject music into silent films when appropriate.For example, if someone on screen began to play the piano, Altman would also play piano to give the effect of diagetic sound, since recording audio was not possible at the time.

One of the most enjoyable and unique parts of the presentation were the illustrated slides. Intricately designed, often strange and funny, and painstakingly hand colored, these slides were accompanied by songs performed by Altman. At the end of every song, the audience was asked to join in a round of the chorus. This aspect of The Living Nickelodeon differentiated the performance from most other lectures.

Altman was an overall engaging speaker, often injecting jokes into his performance and occasionally going into the audience during the short film screenings.

Altman’s appearance at St. Olaf was sponsored by the Film Studies Program. Altman has traveled around the world, both individually and in a group, to perform The Living Nickelodeon. The list of performance venues ranges from college campuses such as New York University, to international music festivals like the Bologna Festival in Italy, to world-renowned museums such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Louvre in France.

Altman is also the author of several award-winning books regarding film and cinema studies, including Silent Film Sound, recipient of the Society of Theatre Librarians Prize for best book published in 2004 on recorded performance and the Limina Prize for best film book published in 2004.

When he is not performing, Altman is a professor of cinema at the University of Iowa, and continues his research on early cinema.